Chamber, NEI collaborate on new entrepreneur site

The new online community is devoted to being the "connective tissue" between entrepreneurs, funders, mentors and even hangers-on.

The site, startgrid.com/detroit, is funded through a $100,000 grant from the New Economy Initiative and marketed by the Detroit Regional Chamber.

Startgrid founder Peter Gardner likens it to a "collaborative platform," but attendees at the Detroit Policy Conference, where it was unveiled, dubbed it Google+ meets LinkedIn meets Facebook because it's structured as a message board where entrepreneurs can network. Eventually, there may even be a function where biz owners can rate advice.

Startgrid is based in Menlo Park, Calif., but Detroit is the first market Gardner is rolling out.

"This is really the place and the culture that I think is the seed around which we want to develop Startgrid," he said.

Of course, there is already a BizGrid in town that lists all the resources available to entrepreneurs. That, too, was funded by NEI. But the chamber doesn't see the two groups overlapping.

"There has been a blossoming of organizations dedicated to entrepreneurship over the past few years," said Ben Erulkar, the chamber's vice president of new development strategies. "It's not that we think Startgrid can do anything better or different. In fact, we want to help those agencies do better."